The Chapel of Bones: (Knights Templar 18) (10 page)

It was a strange little building. Dedicated to St Edward the Confessor, because it was built in honour of King Edward I who had come to hear the trials after the murder, Nicholas thought it a peculiar place. Of course, all cemeteries had the same problem: if the religious establishment had been there for a while, when new bodies were ready to be interred, the pit-digger would keep coming up with old bones, and where should one store them? Bones took so long to rot down compared with flesh and blood. The favoured route was to put up a little chapel like this with a large storeroom beneath in which the bones could be installed, while above prayers were said for all the poor dead.

This was an innovation since Nicholas’s departure. When he had lived in the Cathedral’s grounds, he had truly lived
here
, on the spot where the chapel now stood, when this place had been the home of Walter de Lecchelade, the Chaunter.

No one had said what had happened to the old house. Presumably it was an accident: a fire had razed it to the ground, or a supporting beam had collapsed. It was of no importance.
The place was only a building, when all was said and done, whereas this little chapel was significant. It protected people, giving a shelter to their remains while annuellars prayed for their souls.

It was as likely that after Walter’s murder the Chapter decided to remove the memory by eradicating his house. And they honoured the King while so doing.

Naming it after King Edward was fair, Nicholas considered. After all, if it weren’t for him, the guilty might never have been punished.

This was the first chance he’d had to take stock of the Cathedral since he had arrived, and now he studied the place with interest.

When he was living with the Chaunter, he had been prone to walking about the works, and he had been fascinated by the way that the workmen had gone about their tasks. Of course in those days they were working on the eastern range of the Cathedral, whereas now that end was completed and the men were attacking the nave and western front, bringing it up to the same height as the rest. It meant that scaffolding and equipment were standing apparently all higgledy-piggledy about the main entranceway. Also, the masons, smiths and carpenters had brought all their tools so as to have them closer to where the work was being conducted.

While he wandered about the Close, the rain stopped at last, and now there was a bright sun peeping between the rents of tattered clouds. Warmth began to return to him as his garments soaked up the heat, and he could smell the wet-dog odour as his woollen clothing steamed gently. It was a smell that spoke of comfort to come when he was dry, and he relished it.

There were so many men here, scurrying about like ants in the presence of this massive building. All no doubt knew
what they were doing, but to Nicholas it looked as though they were all witless. There seemed to be no logic he could discern.

Walking closer, he saw men hauling on ropes, and he stopped to watch them. With his head and back so bent, it was hard to turn his head to gaze upwards, so he simply assumed that they were lifting something up to the wall and continued on his way.

‘Friar! Friar! Stop!’

Nicholas paused in the mud and moved his head this way and that, but couldn’t see the man who had called.

‘Please, stop there. A little while ago a man was squashed to death right there! Wait!’

‘If people want to talk, why do they conceal themselves?’ Nicholas muttered to himself as he waited. Soon a pair of legs appeared encased in the black of a clerk’s tunic, and Nicholas let his eyes ride slowly upwards. ‘Well?’

‘I … my God!’

Nicholas always felt a slightly perverse satisfaction when people first took in his appearance. The scar inflicted on him that night had ravaged what had before been rather good looks. His assailant had used a long-bladed weapon, perhaps a sword, or a very long knife; whichever it may have been, it had torn into his flesh at the temple, pierced his eye and ruined it, and then continued downwards, ripping away the flesh from cheek and jaw, opening the whole side of his mouth. He was told that when they found him that morning, the two annuellars on their way to prepare for the first of the day’s masses in honour of patrons and dead canons, the Bratton’s Mass, had come across the bodies and thought all must be dead. Nicholas himself had most of his head simply a mass of blood, and with all the exposed bone, they had thought he couldn’t survive, until one noticed that there was a
bloody froth coming from around the wound. He was breathing.

‘My visage shocks you?’ Nicholas asked nastily.

‘Is it really you, Nicholas?’ the man gasped, and Nicholas peered up more closely.

‘Matthew?’

Henry heard the banging on his door soon after he had gone through to his counting room, and groaned inwardly. ‘Another damned fool asking for a saddle he can’t afford,’ he grunted as he listened for his bottler’s steps. Soon he heard the steps return, and he sat up a little more smartly in his chair. For all his cynicism, a man couldn’t afford to shun any client, especially when he was in the process of waiting to hear from a dissatisfied customer who might well sue him and ruin him utterly.

‘Master, it’s …’

The bottler was shoved from the doorway, and William entered, his face wreathed in smiles. ‘Master saddler, it’s good to be here again. Bottler, bring me a jug of wine, and one for your master,’ he added, prodding the man with his staff. He hopped over to a stool and sat, rubbing at his calf. ‘Fucking wound. You’d have thought fifteen years would see it off, but the bleeding thing comes back each winter. Hurts like a sodding burn under the skin. All because of a poleaxe some arse shoved at me when I was fighting a man on the stairs above me. I killed him slowly when I caught him, I can tell you! Ha! He squealed for a good three hours before I got bored!’

Henry surveyed him despairingly. ‘What do you want here, William? I’m very busy.’

‘Ach, God’s Balls, man, you’re always busy. I thought the idea of being a rich man in this city was, you could take more
time off to enjoy yourself, eh? Well, this is your opportunity. I fancy getting lashed today. You can come and help me.’

‘I can’t just drop everything to go and drink with you!’ Henry protested. ‘I’ve got a business to run here.’

‘What’s the point of a fucking business if you can’t tell them all to poke themselves and have some fun?’ William asked reasonably. ‘Anyway, the market’s open and the bulls will be baited soon. We could go and have a drink at the alehouse on the corner, then on to the baiting pens for a wager or two, and back to …’

‘I cannot possibly. That is ridiculous.’

‘Why? You too grand to enjoy a drink with me any more?’ William asked, his grin broadening. ‘Time was, you were happy for a few cups of ale with me.’

‘I don’t have time for this,’ Henry muttered.

‘What’s the matter? Have you forgotten all the fun we used to have? Eh? Come on, grab a cotte and a hat and let’s go.’

The bottler returned with the wine and William slurped a half-cup in one gulp.

‘I can’t. I have work to do,’ Henry said, looking away.

‘There something wrong? Something wrong with me?’

Henry looked back quickly. He recognised that tone. It was the voice of the other William, the man who would draw steel and stab a man for an imagined insult. ‘No, old friend.’

‘Then what is it? You ashamed to be seen with me?’

Henry felt his shoulders sag. ‘Will, I am worried. A customer has threatened to sue me.’

‘Tell me who it is, and I’ll see he doesn’t,’ William said reasonably.

‘You can’t fix everything with cold steel!’ Henry blurted.

‘I don’t know anything you can’t,’ William smiled.

‘I’m still suffering from the night we killed the Chaunter. I feel such guilt … it is heavy on my soul.’

‘Him? Christ Jesus, that was such a long time ago,’ William exclaimed in genuine astonishment. ‘I haven’t counted the men I’ve killed since then. Why on earth does his death worry you?’

‘Because it was murder, Will: murder! We set upon him, we bribed others to help us, and we murdered him,’ Henry said wearily. ‘It was a foul deed.’

‘Pah! It was nothing.’

‘I am going to be dead soon, and before I die, I want to confess my crimes.’

William shrugged. Then he leaned forward, and the other grin was on his face again, the cold, dead grin of the murderer. ‘That’s fine; you do that. But don’t recall any other names, will you, Master Saddler? Because if I heard you were trying to fix
me
at the same time, I’d see if I could keep you screaming even longer than my record. Eh? You understand me? For you, a confession will hurt a bit, but for me, it could mean me being thrown out of the Priory. I don’t want to lose my corrody, Saddler. So keep my name out of anything like that. You understand me?’

John Coppe watched his friend the porter. They were at the gate again, and Janekyn was busying himself about the place, watching all those who were passing through, ever alert to the sight of known cutpurses or men or women of ill-fame who might enter either to rob or solicit for business.

Janekyn was a remarkably calm man. Sparing of words, he was nonetheless kindly, and to men like Coppe who had suffered in battles, he was generosity itself, always sharing his meagre supplies of food. Yet there was something about the friar which had unbalanced him. At the time Coppe had seen
this, and decided that he wouldn’t probe and upset his friend, but that was some days ago now. Jan had had enough time to get over whatever it was that the fellow had said. Even so, Coppe was reluctant to broach the subject … but his fascination was being fed by the air of mystery.

‘You remember that friar? I saw him again earlier.’

‘Ah?’

‘Yes. Down there near the Charnel Chapel. He met up with one of the Treasurer’s clerks – the one in charge of the works.’ There was no response. ‘Come on, Jan, what’s the problem? He said something about there being a murder, and then you and him went all quiet. He asked whether you were a local man, said that was that then, and buggered off.’

Janekyn shrugged slightly, his eyes still on the passing folk, and then he pursed his lips, shot a glance at Coppe, and jerked his head to beckon his assistant. When the lad was standing in his place with a heavy ash staff in his hands, Janekyn went inside and came out with a couple of thick fustian blankets and a jug that steamed in the cool air. ‘Who needs cups when the weather’s like this?’ he grunted rhetorically, and took a swig before passing it to Coppe. It was heavily spiced and sweetened wine, and Coppe could feel the warmth soaking down from his belly to his toes – even to the toes of the leg that had gone so many years ago.

‘There was a murder, right enough. It was November, a week and two days after All Souls’ Day.’

Coppe nodded. That would be the ninth, then.

‘The trouble had been brewing for ages. I was only a lad, but I can remember it still. It cut up the city. The Bishop was a foreigner, a man called Quivil, who was arrogant. Wanted everything done his own way. Under him the Archbishop put in a Dean who was a local man, John Pycot – everyone called
him John of Exeter. The Archbishop was determined to see Pycot grow in importance and fame. There were rumours spread about him – that he was greedy, took benefices wherever he could, and never did a stroke of work apart from what would benefit him – but they came from the Bishop. That was the sort of man Quivil was. Always putting down those he couldn’t get on with. All the city respected the Dean. We liked John Pycot. The Bishop refused to accept him, and never even acknowledged his position, but couldn’t get rid of him. So he put one of his own men in as Chaunter, to sort of keep Dean John at bay the whole time. The Dean was cross, and it led to a fight. The Chaunter got killed. And that’s about it.’

‘Why the coldness towards the friar, then?’

‘He was there; he helped protect that damned Chaunter against the good Dean’s men. That friar saw what the Bishop wanted him to. Useless. No, any man who knows this city would agree that the Dean was the better man.’

‘Is he dead now?’

‘Don’t know. He was gaoled for a long while in the Bishop’s cells, then forced to take up the vows and go into exile in some monastery or other. No one will hear from him again.’

‘Don’t you think that the friar has paid for his actions?’ Coppe said, thinking of the dreadful wound on his face that all but matched his own.

Janekyn gave him a steady look. ‘Sorry, John, I know you feel sympathy for a man like that, but I can’t. He fought on the side of the man who helped create a rift in the Chapter. For that I hope the Chaunter rots, and I don’t care to drink with those who tried to save him, neither.’

After William’s departure, Mabilla entered the counting room. ‘I saw him leaving,’ she said quietly, nervously fingering a thread on a tapestry.

‘He told me I mustn’t confess,’ Henry said heavily. His wife, he could see, was very scared. She seemed unable to meet his eyes, as though she feared his emotions might force her to break down in sympathy.

Sympathy was a commodity he could not summon up for others. He sat drained, his face twisted and his eyes moist; he could have wept. Both forearms lay on the table before him, and Mabilla felt that William had sucked the energy from him. Even the will to live was gone.

‘Oh, my love,’ she said. She went to his side and took his hand in her own, kneeling and gazing up at him. ‘My love, don’t look so upset. The man was only demanding that you protect him.’